Do You Need Shopify Plus for B2B in 2026? What Changed on Basic, Grow, and Advanced

01. What Actually Changed

Until early 2026, native Shopify B2B, the company account structure, price lists, quantity rules, and B2B checkout, was gated behind Shopify Plus. A merchant on Basic, Grow, or Advanced who wanted to sell wholesale had to either upgrade to Plus or fall back on workarounds: a third-party wholesale app, a separate password-protected store, customer tags with manual discount logic, or draft orders processed by hand.

Shopify removed that gate. The core native B2B feature set, company accounts with locations and contacts, up to three custom catalogs per store, quantity rules and volume discounts, net payment terms in every region, vaulted credit cards for B2B buyers, the Trade theme, and B2B Flow automations, is now included on Basic, Grow, and Advanced at no additional cost. Nothing needs to be purchased separately, and no app needs to be installed to get the baseline structure working.

Why it matters: the decision to build a wholesale channel used to start with a plan upgrade that cost more than most SMB storefronts spend on hosting for a year. Now it starts with a settings toggle on the plan you are likely already paying for. That changes who can reasonably justify testing a B2B channel at all.

02. Plan by Plan: What You Get

The fastest way to see what changed is side by side, plan by plan, against what Plus still offers on top.

Every plan in that table, including Basic, now gives you company accounts, price lists, quantity rules, volume discounts, net terms, the Trade theme, and B2B Flow automations. The difference between the standard plans and Plus is not whether B2B works. It is how many catalogs you can run and a handful of advanced checkout and payment capabilities covered in the next section.

For the full breakdown of what each native feature actually does once it is turned on, our Shopify B2B features guide covers company accounts, price lists, and checkout in depth. Read this post first for the plan decision, then that one for the implementation detail.

Why it matters: three catalogs sounds like a small number until you map it against your actual pricing structure. A business with one standard wholesale tier and one distributor tier fits comfortably. A business with a dozen negotiated account-specific price books does not, and that is the real line between staying on Advanced and needing Plus, not B2B access itself.

03. What Still Requires Shopify Plus

Plus did not lose any B2B capability in this change. It kept the features that were removed as a requirement for everyone else, and those remaining Plus-only features are specific enough to check against your own operation rather than assume you need.

Why it matters: none of these five gaps are things a wholesale channel needs on day one. They are the kind of requirements that show up once volume and account complexity grow, which means the right sequencing for most Canadian manufacturers is to launch on Basic, Grow, or Advanced first and upgrade only when a specific limit is actually blocking you.

04. Should You Upgrade Anyway

With B2B no longer the deciding factor, the Plus decision comes down to whether you actually need the five items in the previous section, not whether you want wholesale at all.

• Stay on Basic, Grow, or Advanced if: you have a handful of wholesale accounts on one to three pricing tiers, net terms cover your payment needs, and you do not need a second storefront.
• Consider Plus if: you run more than three distinct catalogs, need deposits on large custom orders, or plan to launch a second storefront for another brand or region.

A useful reframe: the roughly $2,000 a month difference between Advanced and Plus is now a real trade-off against other spending, not a mandatory toll for B2B access. That budget can fund ERP integration, a custom self-serve portal experience, or a marketing push instead, depending on what actually moves your wholesale revenue.

Why it matters: businesses that upgraded to Plus purely to unlock B2B in past years were often paying for headroom they never used. Reassessing that spend against this change is a legitimate cost-saving review, not just a technical curiosity.

05. Turning On B2B on Your Current Plan

Enabling B2B on a standard plan uses the same settings-panel process Plus merchants have used for years. No plan change and no app install are required to get the baseline working.

1. 1. Enable B2B in Settings. In your Shopify admin, go to Settings, then Customer accounts, and turn on B2B for your store.
2. 2. Create your first company. Under Customers, add a Company profile for your first wholesale account.
3. 3. Add locations and contacts. Give that company its shipping locations and the individual buyers who will place orders.
4. 4. Build a catalog and price list. Decide which products that company sees and at what pricing, remembering the three-catalog limit on standard plans.
5. 5. Set payment terms. Assign net 15, net 30, or net 60 terms to the company, or leave pay-now in place if that fits the account better.
6. 6. Test the buyer experience. Log in as a test contact under that company and confirm pricing, catalog visibility, and checkout behave as expected before inviting real accounts.

Why it matters: because this is now a configuration task rather than a purchasing decision, a small team can pilot a wholesale channel with one real account in an afternoon and learn whether the model works before committing further budget or development time.

06. If You Already Pay for Plus

If your store is already on Shopify Plus, nothing about your setup breaks or changes automatically. You keep unlimited catalogs, partial payments, expansion stores, and every other Plus feature exactly as before.

What is worth a genuine look is why you are on Plus. If B2B access was the primary reason you upgraded, and you are not using unlimited catalogs, deposits, expansion stores, or checkout extensibility, this is a fair moment to ask whether Advanced now covers your actual usage. If you are using those Plus-specific features, the upgrade is still earning its cost and this change does not affect that calculation.

For a fuller picture of when Plus is worth it beyond B2B alone, checkout customization, higher checkout capacity, and app ecosystem access also factor in, see Shopify Plus support and when the upgrade is worth it.

Why it matters: a plan review triggered by a genuine platform change is a legitimate way to find savings without cutting anything you actually use, and it costs nothing but the time to check your catalog count and payment setup against the list in section three.

07. What This Means for Canadian Wholesalers

Atlantic Canadian manufacturers, distributors, and family-run wholesalers are exactly the profile this change is aimed at. Many have wanted a self-serve ordering portal for their retail accounts and independent shops for years but could not justify a $2,300 USD a month platform tier for a wholesale channel that might do a few hundred thousand dollars a year, not millions.

That math is different now. A manufacturer already running Grow or Advanced for their retail storefront can turn on company accounts, wholesale pricing, and net terms this week, at no added platform cost, and start moving independent retailers and regional distributors off phone and email orders. The remaining budget question becomes ERP integration and process, covered in our Shopify ERP integration guide, and the self-serve experience itself, covered in our wholesale self-serve portal guide, not whether the platform supports B2B at all.

For a business already running both a DTC storefront and wholesale relationships, our guide to running B2B and B2C on one Shopify store covers the operational side of serving both channels from a single plan, which this pricing change makes considerably more affordable to start.

Why it matters: the businesses that benefit most from this change are the ones that were priced out of native B2B before, small and mid-size Canadian manufacturers and distributors, not the large accounts that were already comfortably on Plus.

08. Key Takeaways

• Shopify moved core native B2B, company accounts, price lists, quantity rules, net terms in every region, the Trade theme, and B2B Flow automations, onto the Basic, Grow, and Advanced plans in 2026, at no extra cost.
• Shopify Plus remains the only way to get unlimited catalogs, direct catalog assignment to companies, partial payments and deposits, expansion stores, and B2B checkout extensibility.
• Standard plans are capped at three custom catalogs per store, which is enough for most manufacturers and wholesalers starting out.
• Enabling B2B is a settings-panel task on any plan now, no app install or upgrade required to get the baseline working.
• Merchants already on Plus keep everything they had. The change only matters if B2B access, not the other Plus-only features, was the reason for the upgrade.
• Canadian manufacturers and distributors who were priced out of native B2B before now have a real reason to pilot a self-serve wholesale channel on their existing plan.

09. Frequently Asked Questions